


during the dark and storming nights

by PurpleLex



Series: Dreams & Lasts [3]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: (Maria and the kids are in dream form), Claire Temple (mentioned once), Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Frank Castle POV, Heavy Angst, Micro (mentioned), Mild Hurt/Comfort, Murder, Violence, Wilson Fisk (mentioned) - Freeform, mention of suicide, mentions of sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 02:02:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11048979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleLex/pseuds/PurpleLex
Summary: [ Frank POV retelling of "the space between dreams and reality" ]The concrete columns echo again with the second gunshot and he stands there for a minute on shaky feet, disgust and satisfaction twisting and warring against each other within his gut.The satisfaction doesn’t last long, yanked from him harshly when he climbs back into his truck and hears the radio abuzz over a shooting at the tenement building on 47th. Two women sustain injuries — one Sophia Rossum, and one Karen Page.He forgets to breathe for a long minute.





	during the dark and storming nights

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS TERRIFYING. I have absolutely zero self-confidence in writing Frank's POV, but then I stumbled into this while trying something else during CivilWarsintheKastle Week, and throwing away 16k words feels wrong, so. Welp. This was also prompted some ~6 months ago by a comment from @Evilsquirrel about doing a flip of the story from Frank's perspective, so thanks!! And here you go, haha.
> 
> I'm like 99% sure anyone that's going to read this has already read the first two parts that are Karen's POV, but just in case, although it's not really necessary, I'd suggest reading those too so you can play 'spot the differences' ;P

* * *

 

 

Six feet under, Schoonover’s buried several paces away from his discrete shack in the woods, no one the wiser to his fate. No one except the killer, and Karen. Frank doesn’t have to dwell on any doubt — he knows she won’t tell anyone of this night. 

It’s just _who she is_ , and guilt sways through him at that, stays heavy within him as he shovels the nearly frozen dirt steadily into the early hours of morning.

He’s used her, and he can’t attempt to excuse himself by saying he hadn’t meant to. The moment he shimmied open the locks on her car and decided that she’d be bait, taking the only two-birds-one-stone option available that let him guarantee her safety, _that_ crossed the line. And he couldn’t get that back.

Maybe then this time she’d never return. Never care again.

It was useless to care for a dead man, anyway.

His shoulders possess a dull ache by the time he’s dragging Schoonover over the edge into the pit of black earth. The corpse hits with a dull thud, one of the legs stretched out from rigor mortis cracking at an odd angle. The wallet’s an expensive leather one, but he tosses it aside. The cards and cash, on the other hand — those are what’s useful. Those and the house keys tucked in one of the jacket’s pockets. 

Schoonover’s got a network, and Frank’s going to enjoy toying with them while they struggle to track down their boss, going to relish pulling them in hook, line, and sinker. His old C.O. isn’t going to be the last familiar face among the bunch, but he’s ready for that. They took his family from him over a perceived slight. Because he’d said no, because he’d tried to be _better_ than them.

He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

After he crawls out of the makeshift grave, Frank spends a minute on his knees staring up at the sky, steadying his breath. Preparing for round two with the shovel. Just far enough out from the city, a handful of lone stars twinkle in the darkness.

Frank Jr. loved the stars, _once_.

A memory surges forward, a vision of his boy begging for a telescope after a week long solar system project in kindergarten. He’d had to rope Maria in to help explain they had nowhere to put it. Frank Jr. had pouted the rest of the day, but when they surprised him a short week later with a spinning planets nightlight, he’d lit up brighter than the sun. 

It’s fuzzy to recall everything but what’s clear is how Maria laughed so lightly, how Frank Jr. was missing two of his front teeth at the time, how Lisa insisted on sleeping on the floor of her brother’s room that night so she could stare up at the shapes’ moving reflections, too. He tries to remember if that thing was still in his son’s room before the carousel. 

Before the end.

He tries to remember, but _he can’t,_ because part of his head isn’t his own anymore. The scene rapidly becomes as elusive as water running through his hands until all he has left is nothing but the coldness around him.

Frank looks down at the blisters forming on the inside of his palms. He grabs hold of the shovel and stands to finish the task in front of him before the dawn splits the sky open.

 

* * *

 

Karen’s car is gone from the side of the road by the time he emerges. Towed away, then. He wonders if she waited for that or if she got some other ride and just called it in, wonders how long she was out here on her own after he shut her out. His mind skitters to the blood that was matted on her forehead and the arm she’d been nursing.

No apology would ever be enough for that. It couldn’t be.

And despite the slight wisp of an urge, no amount of apology would be worth stepping back across that threshold now that she’d finally turned away, either. 

He rolls his shoulders uncomfortably and keeps walking.

 

* * *

 

Frank waits in the shadows of the thin trees for Schoonover’s house to empty. It’s late morning by the time the three teenagers inside file out, jumping in a friend’s car after the kid inside it lays on the horn. The yelling and laughing echoes across the lawn.

If he thought hard enough, he could conjure up younger pictures of those three that Schoonover used to keep tucked away during tours. If he pressed, he could recall their names.

But if he did that, he’d be tempted to feel guilt for them, too. So he doesn’t.

There’s a drawer locked in Schoonover’s desk that none of the keys on the ring he’s stolen fit into. He smashes it open and takes everything inside. There’s other files that strike enough interest for him to tuck them under his arm before he messes up the office a bit more, stalking through the halls to find the master bedroom and set up the scene there as well. 

The scene of a man in a hurry. 

He leaves some evidence behind, though, splayed across the desk — pages from an older ledger tracking shipments, pictures of cargo numbers and their boxes tightly-packed with drugs that had been kept as a kind of insurance, if Frank’s instincts are right. He doesn’t have any use for these, watched one of these ships blow only a day ago. 

But the family now missing a father will want a hint as to why.

 

* * *

 

It takes two turns of the key before the truck splutters to life, crushed front be damned. 

The trek back and forth from the shed to load up every armament tucked away inside its inconspicuous walls leaves his cheeks numb and boots damp, but he hardly feels it, mind narrowed with pinpoint purpose. 

He hooks a tarp over the flatbed and doesn’t look back.

 

* * *

 

It feels like years have passed since he was last here, standing at the sidewalk with his nurse waiting like a nervous mouse while Frank had stared at this house with its mailbox branded CASTLE and been unable to take a step further as tears obstructed his already partially unfocused vision. 

Empty resignation is all that consumes him now.

This isn’t his home. This isn’t _a home_ , period. His home was three people that don’t exist anymore, that took their last breaths as mangled caricatures of themselves, leaving behind only hints of a presence. 

He ventures up the stairwell only far enough to look through his boy’s door. 

The night light’s nowhere to be seen.

 

* * *

 

He left Karen fraying at the edges with broken trust and beliefs in her chest, stumbling out of a barren forest on the edges of upstate New York, a brutal act covering up better intentions, but it ends up being a mere 24 hours before he lays eyes on her again.

He embraces the Punisher name for all to see, helping Red stay alive by acting on the other side of the line that the devil could never cross, before scanning the crowd below, a whim of a choice simply to be sure no fools with the police or otherwise were going to try making a name for themselves and come after him. Everyone’s either too alarmed or distracted to do more than cower. 

Well, _almost_ everyone. 

All except her.

Never letting fear drive her, possessing more understanding of him than anyone else — and with her there, he almost regrets using the skull so _flagrantly_ , putting so much effort into being branded by the symbol that had lured her into dissecting every piece of him until she almost lost herself — she just _stands up_. Hair curling around her face, bathing in the red and blue flashing across her, he can’t help the itch that flares somewhere in his lungs. It makes him want to take a scraggly deep breath but he resists.

The start of an urge to ask something, maybe. The reaction of wanting to be look closer, definitely.

It was a fucking nuisance.

 

* * *

 

When Frank turns away, he tells himself it’s going to be the last time — the last time he gives a shit about whether or not they crossed paths, the last time he’ll let it happen at all. 

But that bold-faced lie only holds up for about another six hours before he watches her climb out of a taxi at the sidewalk of her apartment in the very early hours of morning. Six hours is an _incredibly_ generous allotment, actually, considering that he’s been lurking on the rooftop across from her building not long after leaving Red be. It had bothered him, burrowing under his skin after he found the rest of the city mostly quiet, wondering if she was _this stubborn_.

Of course she was.

If he were someone in her life, he’d tell her to suck up whatever problems she has with the rest of the few friends in her life and spend the night elsewhere. _Keep_ spending the night elsewhere until it’s possible to permanently relocate to a new home without bullet holes riddling the walls and windows boarded up. 

But he’s not going to walk back into her life over this. And no one could dictate what she did, anyway.

He curses under his breath then before putting his scope away and continuing on his trek through the city.

 

* * *

 

Schoonover’s disappearance is noticed about as quickly as Frank expects. 

Whispers of the Blacksmith’s empire falling into disarray start circulating, different rumors popping up with every new day of what’s become of the mysterious head of the snake. He keeps one ear out for it as he pulls the handful of contacts he has left willing to lend a lead after the all too public coverage of his trial, starts building new ones as he tracks down yet another batch of scumbags to rid of.

It takes two weeks for him to establish a rhythm.

Slowly, he spreads across the city, salvaging the hidden stockpiles of weapons he’d kept scattered about over different rooftops. In rundown buildings tucked away in pockets of the city where no one’s likely to ask many questions, he sets up safe houses, forks over stolen money to unsuspecting landlords and landladies.

It’s like flicking a switch, relying on instinct and precision as he’s once more hunting out the rats devoid of any decent specks of humanity. He relies on the hungering adrenaline every night until it gives out on him, stops holding up his bones long enough for him to crash without being haunted by his own head. 

But, sometimes it doesn’t give him even that small concession, so in the dim hours after a disturbed sleep he only reaches for the caffeine.

Just past New Year’s, if it weren’t for the fact that he has to duck his face now thanks to it having been splashed across the front of every newspaper, or that the temperatures are perpetually dipped towards freezing, it would seem just like any other day back when he left the hospital for the first time. Back when he was hunting down the Irish, the Mexican cartel, the Dogs of Hell.

Purpose thrums through his veins, carrying with it the lick of a fire he can’t fully douse.

Not that he’s trying to. He’s _stoking_ it, feeding it carefully bit by bit, letting it keep him steady on his feet as he keeps pushing forward. He won’t stop this time until the entire city is cleansed, or someone gets a bullet to stick in his head first.

 

* * *

 

The house feels like a shell of itself as he drenches it in gasoline.

He looks at the pictures scattered across the entryway and mantle one last time before grabbing what he really came for — the last of his weapons, and the MICRO disk. Pictures of Maria, Lisa, and Frank Jr. stare back at him with wide grins and loving eyes, but shadows threaten to consume every photograph, and while his fingers twitch at his sides, he can’t work himself up to taking a frame in hand, to keeping one of these images with him.

Eyes linger a few seconds longer on the one with Maria’s full belly as he recalls the day it was taken. He was home on leave, and she’d sent him pictures the entire time, but they didn’t prepare him for how big she’d be, didn’t prepare him for how that feeling of the baby kicking around inside would tilt his world off it’s axis until every single thing in his life became about _them._ Until nothing else mattered even remotely close to the way they do.

His fingers twitch, but the memories fade nearly as soon as they come. 

Frank didn’t believe in the concepts of heaven and hell, God and the Devil anymore, but if such things did exist after all, he didn’t want them to know what befell them. 

He didn’t want them to see him now.

 

* * *

 

The streets are cast in long shadows as dusk settles over the city. He doesn’t think about it as he’s criss-crossing alleyways he’s come to know like the springs of his best rifle. These paths are known so well that he can’t even pretend it’s by accident that he’s passing by her building once again, he just _is_.

She’s writing. Got a little column in the Sunday paper over Christmas, and it made him scoff to read it, but now he keeps checking the Bulletin every day he can. She’s got her name plastered all across it, tagged second with other journalists as she appears to dip her toe into every subject while she’s always branded the same — _Karen Page, assistant editor._

That won’t last for long. She’s too tenacious, too resourceful, and she’ll work her way up faster than anyone. Maybe this time she’ll invest her energy into something less dangerous, maybe something like superficial politics or the feel-good local news bits that always cover the charity runs and park openings.

_Yeah, right._

That was as likely as Red accepting the deaths Frank kept piling onto his record.

When he reaches the corner, he pauses. He’s going to turn left, towards the bodega he’s about to stakeout for a certain drunk domestic abuser tonight, but for a moment he blinks up at the windows. A corner light’s on, windows fixed, but now glass and curtains are covering what cardboard had before. She’s still here.

Frank doesn’t linger.

 

* * *

 

Lisa’s begging to ride the carousel again, and she’s shining in the sunlight, spinning eager circles in her paisley green dress, and all he can do is watch as the gunshots burst through the air, striking her down. It feels as if someone’s sawing a rusted knife through his chest cavity as he’s brought facedown to the drenched grass right alongside them. Smoke fills his nose, mixing with the metallic tang of the carnage around him, sickens him. 

It could almost make him hurl if the horror of trying to put them back together wasn’t keeping him crawling, keeping him trying. A wail sounds from somewhere, somewhere _close_ , maybe even from his own throat, when his little girl’s eyes snap open with a blank stare and fresh blood starts gurgling out of her mouth.

He jolts upright, consciousness seizing him like a heart attack. 

The reality of where he really is swims back into view as he forces the dream as far from his mind as he can. He’s sitting in the truck he’s more or less borrowed from an impound lot. It’s almost blizzard weather outside, and his breath is coming out in harsh puffs of white since he’s got the windows cracked with the engine cut, but the spasms rolling through his body have little to do with the temperature.

Hastily, Frank wipes the remnants of the weeping off his face, breathes in with more measured movements as he stares up at the ceiling, afraid to risk closing his eyes for the smallest moment. Afraid of what other haunting memories twisted into nightmares will await him there.

It’s never his intention to sleep — in fact, it’s the exact opposite as he constantly fights against it. Which is why, in his moments of weakness, the need drags him under like a cruel tide cresting without warning.

He slams the door shut as he climbs out. Muscles strung, he’s aware how he must look — hat slung low with a tense gait, dressing in all black, and wearing an ugly mug with a ticked off scowl — but the thermos at his side is empty. And he can’t go back down again. Not now, not any time soon.

He’d prefer _not_ _ever_ , but the bullet that ripped through his cerebrum didn’t come to bless him with any benefits.

The woman running the coffee stand scans him up and down about half a dozen times, but she’s not reaching for any phone right this minute, and she doesn’t give him any funny looks when he asks for the most bitter brew she’s got on those warmers, so Frank ignores it and lets her stare. It burns like acid down the back of his scratchy throat, makes him grimace and clench his jaw. 

He thanks her.

 

* * *

 

Red bursts back onto the vigilante scene with a flare for the dramatic, interrupting Frank’s less than gentle interrogation techniques. 

The former soldier in his hands is his first solid lead on the rest of the minions underneath the now-deceased Blacksmith. Most of them have gone dark, but they’re still turning on each other, dividing up slices of the pie, competing to take control of this sector of the heroin business for themselves.

The man in his grips isn’t one he recognizes, a fairly young guy that had been a newer recruit of Schoonover’s towards the end, a buddy of someone fresh Frank does vaguely remember serving with at one point in his last tour. This guy’s crimes now aren’t exactly original, but rather from trying to be brutal enough to keep up with everyone else around him. Unfortunately for him, those attempts at simply _trying_ involved running some staged drive-by’s against local gangs, involving collateral damage in the process.

And that makes him more than worthy of being a Punisher target.

An elderly couple, shot dead in their bed. A four year old boy, critically injured. A woman, left partially paralyzed.

He’s got the dickhead just about to squeal, just starting to spill his guts, when Red has to be fucking _inconvenient_ and jump down from somewhere above. He’s got his club cracking across Frank’s arms where they’re pressing against the newly-minted murderer’s windpipe before Frank can get a hard rebuffing kick in.

It isn’t long before they’re scuffling, and maybe Frank’s hitting rougher than necessary when it’s obvious Red’s holding back, when they last left off with their relationship on an almost respectful note, but goddammit _he’s busy_.

By the time he’s got Red down for longer than a second, the former soldier’s slipped from the alley, running jaggedly off to hole up somewhere. It’s only because Frank has a good list of ideas on where those places may be that after he’s done cursing up a storm under his breath, he leans back against the wall and wipes off his jacket. 

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” he bites.

The devil smiles sardonically with blood in his teeth as he stands. “Skull’s an interesting touch.”

Frank shakes his head, squints at the man across from him, noting the way he’s hunching more, how he got winded faster. “Thought you’d quit.”

The smile fades. “Hard to walk away from this city. You know that.”

So they weren’t going to acknowledge whoever the dying woman on the rooftop was, then. He wonders if Karen knows about that. Not that it’s any of his business, either. Frank grunts and pushes off the wall. “I’d say it was great to see you, but that’s just pure bullshit.”

“I’ll keep stopping you.”

“Yeah; you keep _trying_ , Red. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

 

* * *

 

The runaway’s eating Ramen at the second address he checks, and Red’s not here this time on account of him waiting an extra day for the devil to get distracted, waited until enough hours pass for the runaway to just start feeling comfortable again. When he busts down the door, the guy’s alone. 

It’s his lucky day.

 

* * *

 

He meets a woman named Rose in the back of an innocuous bakery, and the arsenal of supplies she’s got neatly tucked away in price-tagged cases makes him whistle, even if he’s here purely for information. No one would guess that the nearly-elderly woman in an apron would be a criminal broker on the side, not even him. Not at first.

In places like this, Frank feels like he’s walking the tightrope between vigilante and crook, but he can’t find everything himself, supply everything himself. It would be a whole lot more of a breeze if that were the case.

As it is, this woman’s at least straight-forward, with a morality of her own he can tolerate, and she doesn’t push any unnecessary commentary onto him. He just hopes she’s as reliable as she looks.

“This person you’re looking for— using a name, or an alias?” Rose asks from behind the computer after he sets the cash on the table.

“Alias; been dormant a while. _Micro_ …. And I got a message to attach.”

 

* * *

 

Just shy of three months since he made his choice to live as the dead man the world knows him to be, it’s February, and light dustings of an icy snow forewarning a storm are descending upon the city again. It’s by accident that he catches her like this, but curiosity makes him sit with coffee in hand, and now here he is, skimming the latest Bulletin print as he watches Karen load up a small rented moving van with the help of Nelson and some other blonde.

She’s writing about him, about the crime scenes he leaves behind. If he reads between the lines too much, it would almost seem like she’s just the same as before, looking onto the chaos and bloodshed like it’s just a component of the story instead of what the whole thing is. Karen asks all the _right_ questions in her articles about the people he greets with death. 

She’s so fucking good at it, he can’t help smirking, even as it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth with a feeling just too close to dread resting against the nape of his neck.

Frank keeps the paper obscuring the rest of his face that the ball-cap doesn’t while he watches her venture back and forth between the street and her apartment. It’s about damn time she moved, and even though an inkling inside of him wants to know where she’s headed to next, if it’s any _safer_ , he’s already decided not to follow. 

It’s best he doesn’t know. 

Still, something unsettling stirs through his gut, makes his trigger finger jolt back into life occasionally against the paper cup he’s got in hand. Her hair’s pulled in a strict bun, but she’s relaxed with pink cheeks as they load the bigger pieces of furniture in the back, so relaxed that he’s staring for a solid minute before realizing why.

He can’t recall ever seeing her in jeans like this. Or sneakers.

Pencil skirt and heels, even during everything he’d dragged her through before, the new look makes him acutely aware down to the marrow of his bones just what he’s doing — watching a woman he used to know as he reads her work and tracks her movements _on fucking Valentine’s Day_. If there was anyone else sitting in this seat, and he was the one looking on, this would reek of stalking and bad intentions.

She disappears back inside the building, and then he’s up. He leaves the edition with Karen’s first front page article folded neatly on the café’s table, stuffing his hands in his jacket as he retraces his steps back the way he came.

He’s desperate to be the dead man he made her believe him to be, but it’s a hard moniker to live up to when he’s still got blood pumping through his veins.

 

* * *

 

There’s another explosive mess at a building downtown near the courthouse, and once again he holds some of the blame. _Most_ of the blame.

He tracks the largest Blacksmith spinoff to it, tracks their movements day in and day out until he knows when every shipment time is and what the subtlest shifts in behavior mean. They’ve concocted themselves a semi-official cover, parading like a normal courier business, and he makes mental note of that, to check anyone they might be publicly linked in with. 

Not all monsters hide in the dark — he knows that well by now. 

There’s a fair number of familiar faces in the bunch. Some he used to call _brothers_. It would be disorienting if he hadn’t already accepted the monumental betrayal starting with Schoonover that all this was, if he didn’t hunger to appease the cry for vengeance pounding in his skull. 

Frank waits until they’re all lined up to check shipment at the peak hours of midnight in the delivery alley around back before muttering his mantra under his breath and pulling the trigger.

 

* * *

 

The story’s in the paper a full day after, but Karen’s not the one to write it up.

She’s focused on a tenement case now. 

He’s relieved.

 

* * *

 

He is relieved, at first, but his mind’s a funny thing with a constant supply of paranoia always on hand, so it doesn’t take long until doubt creeps in. Frank tries to ignore it, but while his head’s all kinds of fucked up sometimes, his instincts aren’t necessarily ever _wrong_. 

The doubt corrodes all trust until he has to check up on the tenement himself one early night after he’s done his due diligence on someone suspicious. The man he’d followed turned out to just be a harmless, albeit loud-mouthed, idiot. 

Not anything Punisher worthy there.

For the rest of the night, he’s got nothing but time on his hands, so he heads up to 47th. It’s hard to tell the buildings apart until he’s pulling his scope out and checking the numbers. He sets up shop on one of the higher rooftops across the street, unscrewing the cap of the thermos that’s lukewarm at best.

One sip, and he’s scrunching his nose. Lukewarm would’ve been a luxury.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the few former Blacksmith participants he’d had leads on, none with names he recognized anymore, go underground after the shootout spectacle. If he hadn’t forced them to, then the increased police and security presence at the heart of the city certainly had.

Two shutdowns of Manhattan in four months? Shameful — for city officials, anyway.

After that, there’s a lowly gang one night, some loner criminals on others. And then there’s an accidental discovery of a couple that locks up runaway foster kids in their basement. 

That one really gets him, ignites that all-consuming fire within his veins that yearns for more than a bullet to the head, that needs the satisfaction of the torture and the taunt so that they know, _really know_ , what it means to be as afraid as they’ve made these children feel. 

No matter how hard he tries, his mind is consumed with thoughts of Lisa and Frank Jr. later while methodically disassembling and cleaning every part of the guns he’s used. He recalls their smiles and their fits, their tantrums and their most shining moments. It was beautiful, all of it, and he doesn’t realize his face is wet until streams start dripping off his chin onto his shaking hands.

He wants it to stop, begs it to as regret and guilt wraps its suffocating way around him, but he’s not the one in control here. Not since a bullet ripped its way through his gray matter. Frank sits in the dingy safe house with his head in his scarred hands, fingernails digging against his scalp, until the first streaks of a new day poke through the glass.

The world’s tipped red in his vision and becomes as dark and lonely as when he first woke in that hospital room, chest hurting so hard he thought he might be paralyzed but mind only on one thought — _home_. 

Remembering enough to craft a purpose, and all the time that came after, all the decisions to bring him here, the smell of cleaning oil once again filling his noise— that changed it. That made it something he had to accept and move forward from enough so that he could _do something_ about it. At least, he thought it had, because at some point the fact that he stands alone stopped bothering him. 

It was only fitting for him to finish out this life on this quest with just the company of himself.

And yet here it is, born anew as if he’s been transported back to those first moments out of the coma, panicked loneliness smashing against his ribcage and strangling his lungs, clutching at him for reprieve. 

For a harsh minute, he thinks of letters and phone calls, thinks of times when anxiety about missing the most important moments built in him until he could sit in front of that shitty computer screen with that shitty headset, Maria’s blinding grin appearing on the screen before she fetched Lisa and Frank Jr. for him. The connection was always a mess, but he knew it was there, _always there_ when he was in-between missions and couldn’t take that special brand of distance anymore, and if he could just put in a request, _if he could just ask_ —

But that wasn’t real. That wasn’t his life anymore, _their life_. They wouldn’t magically appear as if this was all some terrible torment cooked up in his head one night in the desert.

He sits in the empty nothingness of the killing tools scattered around, sits in a broken heap and thinks maybe Red’s gotten one thing right.

Maybe he is unhinged.

 

* * *

 

Whatever the answer is to the mystery of this building that Karen’s investigating, Frank doesn’t have any solid reasons to keep checking up on it. There’s no obvious in for a Punisher judgment, and he won’t encroach on her, won’t walk back into her life like that.

And yet, _here he is_ , legs dangling over the edge, coffee in hand to keep his bloodshot eyes open and useful.

She shows up tonight. Black coat, heels, satchel tucked against her side. Same as always. She’s got one hand perpetually on her purse, though, and that makes him tilt his head. Afraid of a robbery, or something else?

He’s got his rifle ready in his lap when she passes by the man slumped on the steps, just in case, but nothing happens. The lobby door creaks shut behind her. His trigger finger taps a steady beat out against the plastic of the thermos cup until she emerges around an hour later, a small sigh escaping him then. 

His back was starting to get sore, but he didn’t dare take the time to stand and look away. 

Leave it up to her to explore one of the more rundown neighborhoods after the sun’s set, taking with it the little bit of protection that can be found in this cesspool of a city. Karen lingers on the front stoop now, too, and it makes him twitch, eyes darting into all the dark spaces around her a notch quicker than usual. She’s too exposed here, in the low glow of the security lights, and he hates it. 

The rifle’s in his hands again, but there’s no need for it as he watches her give something to the slouched man still gracing the steps. Frank has to curb a wry smirk.

 _Fucking hell,_ if she wasn’t such a bleeding heart sometimes.

He keeps himself tense and ready for a fight until she’s peeling away down the street, and then the burner in his pocket is vibrating. The number’s from one of his suppliers. He sets the rifle down on-top of its case, stepping off to walk the length of the roof, stretching his legs as he flips the phone open.

“What?”

“Kingpin’s put out a price on your head.”

Frank can’t be anything more than disappointed that it’s taken _this long_ for the man to take a swing at round two. Or was it round three? 

He just chuckles into the receiver.

 

* * *

 

It’s a hefty price, but not many on the streets take Fisk up on it. 

Initially, there’s a handful of idiots that rush first and plan later. Frank doesn’t have an inkling of who most of them are until after the fact, but they were planning to kill him for cash — finding out their identities later is more to keep tabs on anyone that might come looking for _revenge_ than it is about justifying the bullet he’s dropped them with.

Then, one of the cartels picks up the tab. They ambush him the next week using the police radio — it’s a smart ploy, calling in a fake report just heinous enough to make him respond sooner than the authorities that will be forced to wait for backup. 

It’s smart, but Frank’s been on edge too much to go in hotheaded. He scopes out what he can from around the corner before they light him up and he’s forced to take the battle to them.

There’s nearly a dozen bodies left behind as he stalks over to the last one struggling to breathe.  It sounds like he might’ve gotten a nicked lung out of this ordeal, but that’s the least of his problems as Frank bends over him. “Where’s your boss?”

Eyes narrowed, the man with barbed wire tattoos spits in his face. Frank grabs his collar and slams his head hard enough into the pavement for him to see stars, a sickening crack radiating with the same volume as a passing helicopter. 

“I asked, where’s your boss?”

There’s no fear in the man’s eyes. “ _Vete al infierno_.”

“ _Hell_ , huh?” Sirens wail close, too close. They’re coming in fast, at most three blocks away, and he’s out of time. “Alright. You first,” Frank grunts before pulling the trigger, spraying the man’s brains across a five foot radius.

 

* * *

 

He’s out cold for a day as he recovers. 

One of his ribs is banged up, there’s two grazes he’s got to patch up on one his arms that keep bleeding through the bandages, and his hands are perpetually bruised and scabbing over. He needs the recovery, but it’s not like he has much of a choice in the matter, the darkness dragging him under as soon as he stops moving in the hideout he’s got situated on the border before Manhattan hits the East River.

This is the part he hates and yet can’t ever escape.

It starts off calm. 

Maria’s there holding him, and he’s just a young guy again, no cares in the world outside of making this pretty girl in front of him keep smiling, keep looking at him like he’s her everything. Bright orange fingernails dance over the curve of his shoulder as she sits pressed against him, whispering close along the shell of his ear, waxing on about her dreams, the future, and the spot he has in all of it right there alongside her.

He thinks he might tell her she’s the boss, because her voice tinkles as she tells him not to forget it.

 _Except that he does_ — he forgets when he signs up for duty without a second thought, consumed after watching the towers fall. But then she’s there again, and everything else but her is blurry as she holds his hands, holds him up firm from where he’d been apologizing, and her mouth’s set in a line as she says she believes him. Believes he feels like it’s what he has to do. He doesn’t deserve her, and he doesn’t think he says that, but he _must_ , because then she’s telling him he better keep coming back, no excuses.

He promises he will. And he does. 

He thinks he can at least do that much.

It doesn’t matter how many times he’s left blind from sand in his eyes, how many men he loses around him, how many times he gets wrecked to shit and starts bleeding out — he has to return to _her_. To _them_.

Maria’s always there, a phantom promise of a touch, holding him together and telling him she’s waiting every time he closes his eyes, until suddenly she’s just _gone,_ the scene melting down into puddles _._ Suddenly he’s home for good and it’s all wrong, because she’s the one gushing blood this time, and _he can’t stop it_ , can’t keep her strong as her stained hands slip away and she leaves him with one last insignificant breath. 

Sobs rack his frame where he bends over them, trying to cradle them close as if it’ll change a goddamn thing, and all he can think is that _he didn’t make her promise_ , too.

He wakes in a cold sweat at some point, realizes he’s on his back against a lumpy mattress only after a long minute spent blinking the despair from his eyes. Muscles protesting, he stands quickly anyway, and forces himself back to work.

It’s all he can do now.

 

* * *

 

Red pushes him inside the safety of an alcove nearby a split second before the shot dings off the side off the van he’d just been loading up. He’d taunt the devil for saving someone like him, but they don’t have the time, both working on instinct as he dives into the van and Red sprints off down the street.

It only takes him thirty seconds to snap the rifle back into place and kick out one of the back doors of the van. Red’s taking the brunt of the fire, distracting the sniper with his dodging, but then he’s ducking completely behind a dumpster and shouting back like he’s just _now_ figured out what Frank’s about to do. Too late.

“Penny and Dime,” he mutters before a .308 pierces through the sky. 

The shooting stops coming.

Red’s not happy, but he doesn’t give a shit.

 

* * *

 

The sniper’s identified as a recent parolee.

Fisk has gotten creative, then, after the rest of the city’s opted to ignore his Punisher bounty. It’s unfortunate for him that this man got a blown-out eye socket for the lone effort.

Frank relegates the cartel’s activities to the back of his mind for the time being and starts tracking the prison.

 

* * *

 

Mid-March brings with it a warm spell that he can’t help hating as he shakes down his usual informants and some newer ones, some he targets from within the Department of Corrections. These activities keep him crossing past the Bulletin’s offices on a regular basis, and he always finds himself turning and pausing for a sign of her, _any sign_ , before continuing.

He doesn’t linger, but then he ends up continuing to do it even when there’s no other reason to bring him here, keeps checking on Karen whenever the days have been dragging by too slowly, building up the restless tension too high between his shoulder blades. It’s checking, nothing more — he’s allowed that. 

It’s practically the same as how he checks on the still-breathing survivors of his victims, a small tick occasionally pulsing within him to make sure there’s some hint of a difference he’s making, that he’s not causing things to turn out worse for those that don't deserve it.

Not that he needs to justify what he does. Red can bother himself with that bullshit.

Karen moves to her own steady beat, oblivious to him being anything more than a ghost in the wind, yet somehow she’s become a tether and doesn’t even know it, anchoring him at times with glowing memories of faded diners and blue hospitals.

There’s a tumble of reasons for why those shouldn’t stick to him so acutely, but they do anyway, appearing in wisps behind hooded eyelids like some bitter kind of motivation. A reminder of what he can’t indulge in, the sort of man he can’t be again for any longer than a handful of stolen minutes while a simplified recollection of who he _was_ tries its best to possess what’s left.

But at least these recollections don’t leave him in pieces and weeping like the rest.

Karen’s a tether to quiet confessions and hopeful smiles. And maybe he needs that sometimes — needs the anchor to the understanding grace of the humanity he’s cutting down monsters for, needs to see the strength of perseverance that keeps someone good, _truly good_ , putting one foot in front of the other day after day just for the measly hope of a hint of justice.

He can’t deny how sometimes he latches onto it, uses it to ground him in the coldest hours of the night when it feels like it could become all too possible for him to someday lose the last scraps of morality that keep him together, keep him standing one rung better than the shitbags he puts down. Maybe he needs all this, but venturing too far into those memories and _what if’s_ has him just as quickly feeling like a wet rag of vulnerability, standing on the all-too-familiar precipice of a cliff where he once again has something, someone, to lose.

Not another good person wronged, but someone close, someone _important_.

To have someone to lose is to be powerless. It’s one of the worst fucking things in the world, and he can’t deal with it. Not again.

He checks on her, but that’s all it is. A fact. And there’s nothing significant in that.

 

* * *

 

Frank tracks every parolee he has the time to — which is to say that he manages to track most of them. If not himself, then with his contacts that are always willing to keep on his safe side, good intentions greased just a little with some extra cash. The storefront of a charity starts becoming a recurring visit between a core group of them, and it enrages him, the way Fisk’s twisted something inherently good into a haven of evil.

Whatever second guessing he had about the place stops after every one that pops in the place can barely manage to wait 48 hours before reacquainting themselves with the black market of crime.

He should wait longer, wait for exact evidence of them fully returning to their former ways, but that means waiting for them to complete their new acts of abuse, and while Red’s usually the one advocating for prevention, Frank won’t ignore what’s about to happen in front of him until it’s over, either. Besides, he’s starting to lack patience these days, Fisk’s smug face looming in his eye while the heavy price for his head continues to hang.

He drops the subtlety approach and decides to leave Fisk a glaring neon sign of acknowledgment. 

A bullet to the temple of every one does the trick.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t take long for Karen to pick up on these activities of his and start publishing piece after piece about his victims. She’s becoming one of the best, but it’s times like this when he wishes she wouldn’t, wishes she’d stop asking all the right questions about these assholes he’s put down and just _let it go._

He wishes she’d return to her tenement issue before she ends up in anymore danger.

 

* * *

 

Frank’s spread out across the table with the police radio cranked up as he methodically cleans every gun he’s used this past week. There’s not too many of them considering his M1911 was doing most of the jobs perfectly fine right now.

Hands spotted with grease, he’s calm and careful as he keeps one ear tuned to the scratchy code rolling out one report after another. It’s not a very eventful night, nothing overtly sinister occurring that Red can’t handle, few things striking an interest in him beyond the occasional name or address that he scribbles down. Some things to check up on later.

It’s quiet until the old clock on the wall ticks just past 1AM and then he’s hearing someone on the police radio read out a 10-54 on 47th. Possible dead body, called in by one Karen Page.

He’s halfway across the tiny excuse of an apartment with his jacket in hand and a spare pistol holstered before he thinks to stop, take a beat, and reconsider. She called it in. She’s the _witness_ , not the victim.

There’s nothing he can do for her.

Jaw clenching, his head dips, listening with a tight chest until a unit arrives on scene and confirms the murder, caller deemed a witness after the fact. He goes back to cleaning the slides laid out in front of him and ignores the slight tremor rolling through his wrists.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t exactly have the hours to spare now like he’s had at different intervals in the past, but he watches her the next night, and the one after that. She holes herself up in her office, bent over a laptop, hands running through her hair every five minutes that she’s not taking a sip from a consistently refilled mug. Drowning, she’s so distracted she doesn’t even think to close the blinds against the darkness. Against him.

Karen was supposed to be taking care of herself now that he was dead to all the world. She was supposed to be _safer_.

So why does a sickly sour part of him feel like he’s letting her down by sitting this far away, by watching from the distance and never stepping in, never protecting her himself?

That’s not his job, and he’s pretty damn sure she wouldn’t ask it to be, either. Nonetheless, he can’t help feeling like he’s failed her every time his eyes flicker back her way.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t watch her the third night. 

He gets a tip on a new parolee, so he chases it down, leaves her in peace like he keeps intending to but has had a hell of a time following through on. This parolee gets released five years early despite the multiple rape and kidnapping charges.

Frank doesn’t have to think for a second about it when he pulls out a shotgun and blasts one of the man’s kneecaps off in a parking garage. It’s more brutal than most might deem necessary, but that’s exactly why he does it, why he pummels the guy’s face into until he’s riding high on adrenaline and the man’s begging, pleading that he won’t do it again as Frank recites his crimes to him.

The concrete columns echo again with the second gunshot and he stands there for a minute on shaky feet, disgust and satisfaction twisting and warring against each other within his gut. 

The satisfaction doesn’t last long, yanked from him harshly when he climbs back into his truck and hears the radio abuzz over a shooting at the tenement building on 47th. Two women sustain injuries — one Sophia Rossum, and one Karen Page.

He forgets to breathe for a long minute.

 

* * *

 

The Punisher is what he’s called because that’s the beginning and the end of it. 

He punishes. _Period_. He’s not a protector. 

Which is exactly why he finds himself sitting on a rooftop at the end of her block, again, in a vain attempt to watch over her that’s too little and too late.

 

* * *

 

Frank’s far from expecting it when she steps out into the yellow of the street lamps nearly a week later. A lamp’s always on in the corner of her place, but she’s been keeping quiet and reserved, tucked away from the world.

That almost started to scare him until now, watching her as she braves the shadows, and he tosses the leftover coffee across the roof before closing up the thermos as he thinks _this_ , watching her put herself back into the realm of trouble, is making him more chilled than the humid snap in the air warrants.

He follows her to a sleepy and very expensive neighborhood, turning off his own engine just over a block away from where she sits. A sigh cuts through him as he rests an arm out the window. He watches her watching the home of the bank manager tied to Fisk’s charity.

Karen was going to be the death of him, he thinks, and it’s a more-than-a-little fucked up thought, but Christ if it didn’t feel like the truth lately.

 

* * *

 

Nearly three hours pass before he can’t take waiting anymore, can’t take sitting wired up with this paranoia spreading like a rash across his skin. He snaps the hat off his head and tosses it into the other seat before climbing out, closing the heavy door behind him. Her silhouette doesn’t lift its head before he’s leaning down and rapping on the window just a hair too fast.

She jumps in her seat, and guilt tears a quick path through him until he’s distracted, noticing that she’s only wielding a pepper-spray can in her hand. His eyes flicker around in the darkness, but the .380 isn’t to be found. 

Karen unlocks the doors after a beat.

The street’s an empty canvas around them, but as he checks it the strums of Shining Star filter up to his ears, assaulting him with memories of a reverse of this situation. He was in the driver seat, she was in the passenger. He’d asked her to come, he was invading on her space now. He’d smiled at her and she’d frowned, but today they’re both frowning as he watches her fingers fumble to turn the radio off with less precision than the last time they’d done this.

“Surprised you haven’t thrown those out.”

“They’re not mine to get rid of,” she says, and his eyes flicker down to the dashboard, considering. 

She’d something like that before, about inheriting it, and he thinks now that maybe she’s more sentimental than he would’ve initially given her credit for. She got this outdated hunk of metal repaired after he wrecked it, she was letting him within five feet of her now. 

She clears her throat. “Do you get a kick out of showing up uninvited?” 

Now that’s worthy of a laugh, if it didn’t make Frank feel so goddamn _uncomfortable_ , remind him distinctly how he didn’t have any right being here, about to practically lecture her. He can’t look her way. “How reckless do you plan on being with this, ma’am?”

“What?”

“This guy,” he gestures to the house, with no small degree of impatience. “What are you gonna do, you gonna catch him when he comes out to get the paper? Before he heads to work? Follow him around all day while you play detective?”

“It’s none of your business,” she dismisses.

He wonders if she was born this stubborn or if her trials thanks to him have only continued to harden her. “I think it’s some of mine when it’s the men _I killed_ that’ve got you here.”

“You’re wrong. It doesn’t matter _how_ I got this lead; I’m following the corruption as far as it goes, and I don’t care what you have to say.”

The righteous condemnations of Red always drip with a fair amount of passion, but it’s been almost six months since he’s last been on the receiving end of one of Karen’s, and damn it if she doesn’t have the devil beaten in spades with conviction. His trigger finger starts up again. 

“No,” he barely utters before clearing his throat. “No, you’re _good_. I respect that.” He turns his head and wishes she’d look his way now, wishes she’d see the truth in his words so that she’d really pay attention, really listen to the _danger_ he’s trying to keep out of her way. “But I’m telling you, ma’am, the end of this trail won’t bring the sort of satisfying conclusion in a neat little bow that you want.”

“I just want to expose the truth.”

His brain conjures up her begging on that miserable November night. He pushes it away. “Writing about this won’t _change_ a goddamn thing. It’ll only put you in more _danger_.”

“So just like that, the truth shouldn’t matter to me?” Her eyes finally meet his, leveling the words with a hard edge, and in an instant he realizes this isn’t a rebuttal — she’s trying to fight him. “I can’t do that. I can’t pick and choose what secrets to share when it’s convenient to furthering what I’m after. I am not you or _Daredevil_.”

His head starts shaking. “Christ’s sake, I am _not_ like Red. That is not what I’m doing.”

“How is that not _exactly_ what you’re doing?” 

She’s roaring for this fight, and he deserves that, but not right now. If any of them should be staying level-headed, it’s him, but she knows what buttons to press all of a sudden, and he’d never considered before that the way she can reach into his darkest and most agonizing moments to pull him out would give her the knowledge of how to also tick him the hell off. She leans forward when he looks away.

“How is that not what you did in the woods? _You knew_ — I can’t believe it took me so long to put it together, but I guess I was preoccupied with the dislocated shoulder.” Frank clenches his jaw against the wince he almost makes at that. He did that — not Schoonover, not any of the Blacksmith’s pawns. _He’d_ hurt her. “God, you knew, you knew _exactly_ what Shoonover was talking about, and you let me stand there and try to plead with you.”

He chokes. “I didn’t ask for that—”

“No, but you heard me out, and then slammed the door on my face. Because you already knew the truth so why would you need to tell me, huh? No, I was just the person _foolish enough_ to keep helping you, because I thought— I thought—”

Her voice is heavy as she leans back away from him. He wants to reach out, wants to… he’s not sure. Every idea is more crazy than the next, so his hand only squeezes into a fist in his lap. “Ma’am, you’re not a fool.”

The bitter laugh he gets in return makes him regret knocking on her window. “I guess I should just believe you weren’t using me the whole time, either.”

“I _wasn’t_ ,” he says quick, and maybe it sounds more like a desperation than a firm truth, but he doesn’t know what to do. 

This was the one thing he’d been waiting for, tried to prepare for if they were to ever speak again, but he never did come up with a way to explain that whatever wrongs she’s feeling from that choice, he’s already been punished by the guilt ten-fold. That it’s one of the most shameful things he’s done since a bullet ripped through his skull — and that alone was its own terrifying kind of fucked up.

“The diner….That was a one time thing, _and_ _you didn’t deserve it_.”

Karen doesn’t move for a long minute before she turns her head, dry-faced and hair tucked back. The look in her eyes makes his muscles tense. “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore…. _Dead men_ don’t get to give advice and they _sure as hell_ don’t get to make my decisions for me,” she says, and his eyes flicker, but he can’t blink, can’t look away from her bright blues and the way they’re blown wide, the way her chin’s jutted out in determination.

It feels like a slap to the face, so vivid that he almost expects to see a red mark in the mirror later, a rejection as firm as he’d been wishing she’d give all this time but somehow stopped actually expecting. It manages to feel harder than any slap Maria had ever leveled his way, and she hasn’t even lifted her hands out of her lap.

There’s nothing left to say.

“Be careful, ma’am,” is all that escapes him before he’s walking right out of her life again.

He thunders back to his truck and has to sit inside for several minutes, staring down the street, thinking through all the ways this could go for her. There’s not a single option he can think of where this spying act would get her hurt, at least not _tonight_.

Which means there’s no reason for him to stay.

 

* * *

 

They’re drowning in a sea of red, crying out for him to do something, _anything_ , as he reaches an arm over the edge. He grabs for Maria since she’s right there, so close, but another form takes hold of him first, yanks him with a strength of a thousand freight trucks until he’s dunked over the side and completely submerged. It’s thick, heavy, pressing him down towards the deep abyss with no mercy.

He’s searching for Maria, for Lisa, for Frank Jr., but now they’re far below him, specks of light that grow ever smaller no matter how much he dives their way.

The sea’s oppressive and all consuming until he’s lost sight of them completely, and it’s stealing the last breath from his lungs that ache as if they’re about to burst. He gives in, then, and stops fighting it. There’s no use. Frank chokes on the thick sludge in his throat and begs for it to end, begs for death to take him too, but then he’s choking and spluttering on stale air, fingers digging faint marks into the uneven floor underneath him. 

It takes him a minute to right himself, push away the images painting the backs of his eyelids and the phantom sensations sticking along his skin, before he stumbles up to the bathroom. 

The lightbulb strung up over the sink quivers, low buzzing bouncing off the tile around him as he splashes his face with cold water. The cleansing doesn’t wake him up fast enough, doesn’t do the trick until he’s got his face under the water pooling high in the basin from the half-clogged drain. It’s far from soothing, stinging pinpricks against the bruises and cuts littering his skin.

It’s not soothing, but he thinks for longer than he should about ending it here and now, about how _good_ it would be to close his eyes one more time without yet another torment waiting on the other side. He considers the ridiculous idea until his lungs are squeezing tight against his ribs again.

He lifts his head.

 

* * *

 

Frank didn’t notice the number of parolees tied to Fisk slowing down until he’s looking for one, looking for a battle, and a lone scumbag is all that greets him. It’s over fast as he waits until Fisk’s lawyer, Donovan something, drives away before taking out the newly released individual with a headshot.

Fisk was getting less subtle. Maybe it was a test. 

But, whether it was or not, Frank couldn’t manage to give a shit — he’d already looked into the evidence against the murderer he just took down, and his conscience wasn’t disturbed one bit by the choice. 

That’s the last for a while, though, and following others like Donovan, like the charity, doesn’t amount to anything but wasted time. The most he finds is some possible white-collar crime, and people just doing their jobs. Jobs where they’re at the service of pieces of shit, yes, but regardless, they themselves weren’t crossing the lines that justified his methods.

This would be an ideal time for Micro to pop out from whatever hole he’s been hiding in, but there’s only silence on that front, too. Nothing but the occasional false lead to the wrong person. He can’t be surprised — he’s the one that taught Micro some of the best techniques for avoiding detection in plain sight.

He’s been tempted more than a couple of times to search for the man with his real name, see if Micro’s still got any kind of trail tied between his identities. But he’s not looking for a target here. To do that would be too risky, could compromise whatever new life Micro’s got built for himself now, and Frank may be an asshole but he’s still got some standards left.

It gets quiet, and this time when he sits outside the Bulletin nearly every night, he doesn’t bother telling himself it doesn’t mean anything — he simply stops caring about what that meaning is. What Karen would think, what she’d want, what Red’s gonna say whenever he wisens up to this. Sometimes Frank thinks he already has and just doesn’t know what to do about it.

Its eerily unpredictable what things the devil does and doesn’t know.

It may not be the Punisher’s job to protect, but if she gets hurt now, it is going to be because of him. And he won’t accept that. _He won’t._

So, he watches.

 

* * *

 

Carefully, Frank starts turning his attention back to the cartel from a month ago. He’s plain clothes, methodically mapping every place he can suss out where their presence exists in the city, following one member to another as they roll out the trail for him. It’s dusk one night as he follows yet another to a residential row. The woman disappears into a house. 

He walks the block, but she’s still inside when he comes back around, so he ducks into an alley nearby.

The ladder to the fire escape clangs loud but it moves easily in his grip. Frank stops at the third landing and rests there, scope in hand, waiting. Operating for 32 hours straight, he’s in desperate need of another cup of coffee, considers calling it a day if this lead doesn’t reappear in the next hour so he can get some brief shuteye before swinging back over the Bulletin’s way, when there’s a soft tap to his right.

He’s twisted against the wall with a hand on the holster at his hip before his gaze identifies the source. 

It’s a boy, no older than eight or nine, and he’s standing in front of the glass with wide eyes, but there’s only the wonder of curiosity when he looks at Frank and the gun.

Quickly, Frank pulls his jacket to cover it, hammering heart slowing back down. He looks into the apartment past the boy, searching. It was dark when he checked it before deciding to stop on this landing, curtains pulled, and it’s still dark now, except if he squints he thinks he sees light coming from a cracked door in a hallway. _Shit_.

He grabs the railing, pads down the first rung of steps, when the boy decides to unlatch the window and slide it up. “I know you,” he calls down simply, almost as if that’s a _good_ thing, and Frank has to stop at that. Eyes squinting up at the boy, he considers him.

There’s nothing familiar, no fleeting sense of a recollection. Frank tilts his head, and it’s a terrible idea, something Red would give him an extra long sermon on, but he opens his mouth. “Where’s your parents?”

“Mom’s at work,” the boy shrugs before settling his elbows against the window frame.

“You shouldn’t open the door for strangers, kid.”

“This is the _window_ ,” he points out, and Frank’s reminded hard and fast of the roundabout excuses Lisa and Frank Jr. would conspire to use, the urge to grin there and gone again in a fleeting second. “And you’re not a stranger — you’re the Punisher.”

Head shaking, he almost wants to give the kid props for recognizing him sans the spray-painted skull, but he clears his throat. “Let’s keep this between you and me, okay kid? And no more opening doors, _or windows,_ for anyone. Doubt your mom’d like that.”

The kid smiles, and nods, but Frank has to wave his hand down like a mime before the kid relents and closes it back up. The sound of something slamming tears his attention away, across the street. His mark’s out and on the move again. 

Frank looks back to the kid and puts a finger to his lips. The kid copies him, and then he winks, and all Frank can see is a vision of his own little boy about to burst with laughter from a summer day long past when he caught Frank about to sneak up on Maria, about to surprise her with flowers after tickling her senseless, so he turns away from it all and strides down to the street more quickly than the pace of the mark he’s following necessitates. 

 

* * *

 

The coffee in his hand is somewhere around number twelve. Maybe it’s that he’s wired on too little sleep and too much caffeine, maybe it’s the always looming clouds of May, but Frank knows there’s something in the air today. 

Something off.

Karen’s working late, again, and she’s without her car, _again_. She shouldn’t do that — not when she thinks she’s all alone out here — and he sees a perfect example as to why not when he’s just about to pack up his bag and trail her down the street.

She’s half a block out when the shadows of an alleyway ahead of her start to twitch unnaturally, and she sees it herself, because she starts moving to the other side of the street at the same time he’s locking his scope onto the railing of the rifle and lining it up along the edge of the roof. “Run, come on, run,” he’s whispering under his breath, watching her pick up pace.

But she’s too late. 

A form emerges from the shadows, and Frank can’t take a shot, can’t get a line of sight that doesn’t have her smack-dab in the middle, too. She’s using her pepper spray and he thinks _good girl_ , feels admiration trickle through him before the man’s making her trip, landing a sucker punch, and just like that, Frank’s hearing a rushing in his ears. He lets out a steady, disconnected breath. 

It’s not more than a handful of seconds later that she gets the upper-hand and then she’s running, the man struggling to stand up, and he counts to three fast to be sure she’s well in the clear before firing.

The man drops. She disappears far ahead.

He doesn’t think to watch her to her place, doesn’t think to worry about if anyone heard the shot, doesn’t think much at all as he drops down and stalks across the empty street. The bullet tore through the attacker’s lower back, a nasty shot, but it leaves the heart, lungs, and brain intact. Which means Frank has time. 

He drags the bastard out of the open before slamming him against a dumpster. 

“Who are you?”

The man’s scrawny, but there’s no track marks where Frank thinks to look, and he’s got a revolver tucked in the back of his waistband that Frank swiftly removes. He had a gun, but he didn’t use it, not yet, and that sets off blaring warning bells inside his skull.

Frank closes a hand over the bastard’s windpipe and gives a healthy squeeze, ignores the weak scratching against his skin. “Who the fuck are you?”

“It was— it was just a _job_ , m-man.”

“Job for what?”

“L-look, man, n-no one— no one puts hits out on p-princesses.”

He should ask who’s picking up the tab, but all he does is squeeze tighter and growl, “So why didn’t you use the _gun_?”

The deer-in-headlights look the man gets tells him all he needs to know — that, and the way Frank had seen him grab at her coat, waist, hair. He should ask who paid for the job, but then the asshole tries to make excuses, tries to smile his way out of it _like it’s just a joke_ , and Frank’s punching him before his mind registers it.

Karen got under his skin long before he recognized it for what it is, and he knows he should stop caring so much, that he needs to shut it all out, but he can’t do that when there’s always going to be the threat of this, _of danger_ , and all that hopeless frustration and fear only twists into the rest of the wired haze within him, losing out to what propels him to punch a pound harder than necessary as he bashes in the other man’s face. The pepper spray mixed within the bloody tears is making Frank’s torn knuckles sting, but he barely registers that, just as he’s sure the man’s probably not feeling those gouged eyes from earlier now that he’s on death’s doorway.

It always feels good, cleaning up the filth of the city, painting the gravel of alleyways a cleansing crimson with the scum that no longer get to walk again, talk again, _abuse again_. It always feels good, but this night, it feels exponentially better, a heady adrenaline raising ever higher in his veins until one second he’s raising another fist and the next he’s being tackled to the ground. He yells, but Red’s got more energy than him right now, got the advantage. 

Gloved hands choke the breath out of him until there’s black at the edges of his vision and his lungs are stuttering. Red steps off him and he rolls to the side to suck in a deep breath.

“Who hired you? We’ll— I’ll get you _help_ ,” the devil promises, and the bloodied mess of a man actually reaches a hand up. “Just tell me.”

“C-contract,” he splutters, and Frank still wants to curb-stomp the man’s head in, but he tries to refrain the overwhelming rage within him, voice at the back of his head finally reminding him that this one won’t be the last if he doesn’t find out _why_.

“Who?” Red repeats, leaning in close. 

He doesn’t need the devil’s superpowers in order to hear the name clearly.

_Kingpin._

It knocks the wind out of him more than any physical blow ever could, makes him stumble half a step, and while Red’s grabbing for the man’s phone to call in an ambulance, Frank slips away. He grows cold as he makes his way through the mostly empty night, a sharp ping running down his spine.

He cleans up the city, a means to an end that doesn’t exist because _there is no end_ in this marathon that is the existence of the damned human race. But knowing it’s Karen he’s trying to protect, Karen he’s almost sort of defending in a small semblance of a way— it takes him back to the nights he first started tracking down the three gangs that tore an innocent carousel all to shit. 

The correlation doesn’t invoke any positivity within, but it had sharpened the edges of his purpose with every fist. A purpose that’s now lost with that one name.

_Kingpin._

She writes her articles about his work without his input, and he doesn’t give her a heads up on anything he does either, but that _doesn’t matter_. It doesn’t matter, because he’s still disrupting Fisk’s operations, and she’s still shedding light on those operations because of it, and whether or not Fisk thinks they’re working together, thinks there’s any continuing connection between them, _Karen’s in danger because of him._  

It’s all because of him.

Again.

 

* * *

 

He’d told himself he wouldn’t know where she’d moved to, that it’d all be safer that way, but that idea was thrown out the window when he started trying to protect her back every night. Frank watches her place through the night now, watches until the sun is high in the sky, and he’s thrumming with an uncomfortable energy that’s sleep-deprivation, caffeine withdrawals, and ebbing adrenaline all rolled into one, but he keeps watching until Red’s tapping his cane against the sidewalk and walking up her steps.

No, not Red. The alter ego. _Murdock_.

It’s not a long visit, but with the reminder of her having a life outside that office, his shoulders start to sag.

Murdock steps out on the street but the cane stays folded in his hands as he tilts his head up, almost looks in Frank’s direction, and Frank is reminded then of the nod Red gave him across rooftops last November when he shouldn’t have been able to hear a thing. He stands.

“You gonna watch out for her this time?”

There’s a rebuffing twitch at that, but then Murdock nods.

He’s a creepy son of a bitch with that power, or ability, or whatever the hell it is exactly, but Frank can dwell on that some other time. He’s got something else to take care of right now.

 

* * *

 

“Sure this is all you need?” Rose asks, handing it over.

He rolls the .380 around in his grip again, double checking it. The weight of it is the one thing he’s not sure of, but everything else seems about right, all the way down to the filed off serial number. Frank nods.

Rose clearly wants to ask something, but she simply closes up the rest of her cases with a hum.

 

* * *

 

She’s not home.

It would be hard to face Karen right now if she was, but shimmying open her window and stepping into her space uninvited — it’s wrong. He tries not to waste a moment as he takes a pad from her desk, leaves the replacement gun on her counter with an extra box of ammunition and a note to keep it close.

This could count as stepping back into her life, but he doesn’t dwell on it.

 

* * *

 

Frank vows to leave her immediate protection to Daredevil, and this time, now that he knows for sure someone else is there to pick up the tab, he actually follows through. The devil’s more equipped for it, anyway. 

She already told him she doesn’t like what he does.

He stops thinking about it, stops worrying, stops letting the guilt fester. It paralyzes him. It keeps him from doing what must be done, what only he can properly do.

He surprises Benjamin Donovan at noon, a time the man would least expect, smashing the glass and yanking him from his car during lunch-break near a deserted park. Frank presses Donovan’s face against the hot metal of the paneling and digs the barrel of his gun into the man’s skull. “Tell your client that I’m done,” he grounds out.

Donovan raises his hands up near his head. “I—I don’t know what you—what you’re talking a-about—”

“ _Bull-fucking-shit._ Tell that fat bastard I know I’m not the only hit he’s put out, and I’m losing patience with his shit. _Manhattan’s my territory_ , you got me? He wants a fight, he can come at me himself,” Frank snarls as he presses the barrel hard enough to leave an imprint. “He pulls one more stunt in my area and I won’t stop before I cut off every resource he’s got until his pockets are drier than the desert in that six by eight cell of his. _And you’ll be the first one to go_.”

There’s the distinct possibility that the man pisses his pants, but Frank doesn’t stick around to find out.

 

* * *

 

 

A myriad of his contacts all confirm the next night that the contracts are pulled. _All of them_ — his, Karen’s, and a handful of others he hadn’t known even existed.

For now, she’s safe.

It doesn’t feel close to good enough. But it has to do.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s four hours into a stakeout for intel on the gun smuggling ring within the cartel he’s tracking, holed up in the shadows of a dilapidated warehouse’s broken window, when Red comes out of nowhere to knock his knees out from underneath him. He reacts on instinct, and Red makes no indication of stopping either, not until after they’re both panting with bruised skin and bloody chins. 

Frank’s reeling from where he’s on his knees, watching the other man sit up a couple of feet away, and puts his hand to his ribs. They were already sore enough from their fight barely a week ago. He jabs against one, and it blooms warmth in protest, but it’s not cracked.

“What the fuck was that?” Frank hisses, spatting out blood before stalking back to the window, a wary eye on the devil.

“You can’t kill him,” Red says, and it makes him bark a laugh.

“Shit, Red, we on that again?” The pair of young recruits standing guard at the dock haven’t strayed from the paths they patrol, at least, so they must not have heard the commotion. For the moment, he’s still got this lead in hand. “I’m planning on putting down a lot of assholes this very second, so you’re gonna have to be more specific about which one’s got you bothered.”

“ _Donovan_. He’s just a lawyer,” Red says after a minute as he clicks his annoying billy club back together.

“Yeah, just like _you_ , huh? Oh, wait.”

“If you’re doing it because of Karen…. There’s other ways, Frank.”

He turns his head. “Enlighten me.”

Red works his jaw a moment, mouth pressing tight, and Frank’s about to tell him to leave him be, when words finally tumble out. “You can— You can ask her to stop.”

“What?”

Red steps forward. “She’s in danger like this because she’s writing about what you’re doing.”

“No one makes Karen Page do anything,” is all he says, fingers curling into fists at the accusation that holds too much truth to deny.

He could tell the devil he’s already tried that idea, but it’s moot to dwell on, and he’d rather not revisit that. Red’s pissed, but Frank doesn’t give any leeway tonight, not up for defending himself on this right now. Not when he’s having a hard time doing that within his own mind. 

He just gives his back to the devil.

Red huffs. “You’re destruction, Frank, and you know it. _Just stay away from her._ ”

If Frank possessed better sense right then, he would let it go, not giving a shit about who gets what final word. 

But everyone has their off days.

“You put horns on your head, don’t pretend you’re a fucking _saint_.”

He knew some retaliation was coming at that, almost welcomed it, but he doesn’t expect the club striking his back, making him grab the wall to keep himself from falling completely on his face. Red’s gone by the time he looks behind. If he’d been there, Frank might’ve had a hard time stopping after decking him. 

It would almost have been a fair return.

He really hates that damn device.

 

* * *

 

A long purple bruise sits just under the skin, perpendicular to his spine, and he uses the daily reminder of it to keep him focused. To keep him away from her.

Red would love to take credit for that — as if it wasn’t something he’d been trying to stick to for the past six months, anyway.

Frank’s itching for a release, to act purely as the Punisher without any other motivations, without any other irritatingly overwhelming emotions. He’s itching for it, so as soon as he thinks up a way to take down most of the cartel in one blow, he starts working on it, doesn’t think about it twice. 

It’s a more reckless idea than he’s had in a while, but that only makes it more tempting.

He sets their numerous ports to all blow in unison one night while they’re partying there, a spectacle of flame and heat, and he doesn’t bother ducking from the crossfire until they see him plain as day amongst the fire. Until the last body drops, he doesn’t think of anything but the survival, the next shot, and it’s _exhilarating_.

 

* * *

 

As soon as the bullets stop firing his way, he realizes the degree to which he’s fucked himself over.

It’s not just the adrenaline making it hard to breathe, but also the untold number of bullets lodged into the mesh of his vest, and he doesn’t think any broke through, but that would almost be a miracle at this point. Either way, it’s hard to know for sure right now, and that doesn’t rule out the possibility that there’s at least one cracked rib to contend with.

Ears ringing, bloody hands gripping the M1911 close to his chest with white knuckles, the helicopters are starting to circle overhead and gust salty winds against his eyes. He leaves all but the pistols he has in hand and strapped to his ankle as he drags himself on two more-bad-than-good legs into the few remaining shadows along the docks. 

Frank presses his back against a large metal shipping container and considers all the possibilities he’s left with. 

One of the helicopters in the air is the police, and sirens are screaming loudly to the west, cutting off the gates he entered from. He’ll have to continue along the docks in the other direction. He’s not bleeding heavily now, but it’s hard to find a patch of his skin devoid of a bruise, open wound, or someone else’s blood.

The bridges will be on high-alert — Brooklyn’s a no-go. So too are his hideouts in the heart of the city. He’s too much of a sight to attempt going that far.

He’s without his truck, and dawn’s first rays are going to start seeping into the sky soon.

But— there is one place. Maybe six or eight blocks away, if he’s thinking straight. He tries to come up with someone else, literally _anything_ else, but he needs more assistance than what he can take care of himself. He doesn’t have any other options. 

It’s decided.

Frank slinks away along the eastern curve of the port as a residual explosion rocks the wreckage behind him.

She’s going to _really_ fucking hate him for this.

 

* * *

 

 

The ladder for Karen’s fire escape is unlocked, already down, and he tries to make a mental note to warn her about that later, but he’s too busy tucking his pistol away and keeping from getting light-headed as he pulls himself up every rung. A minute after he shimmies her window open, a patrol car races past, down the street. He pulls the glass shut and slowly heaves himself down to the floor nearby, head turned to watch every coming and going.

To watch for her.

This would’ve been a good time to have Red’s number, he thinks distantly. If not for the man’s help, then at the very least for that nurse friend the devil had mentioned offhandedly a few times. Then he wouldn’t have to be here, about to burden her once more.

Frank keeps strolling into her life, keeps relying on her in the back of his mind without a thought until it’s too late, until it’s affecting her, and every time he says it’s the last, every time the guilt presses harder against his stomach. But, here he is, doing it again. 

And he can’t even properly explain why, not even to himself _._ He just _is_.

 

* * *

 

He comes alive when a cool hand cups his cheek. 

Frank thinks it might be Maria, reaching out from the far recesses of his mind, asking him for something, but the haze clears as his lung start to seize, and he remember just how impossible that is before he opens his eyes and coughs. Karen swims into view in front of him, blue eyes as clear as a summer sky, and he regrets the way he’s started to taint them with fearful tears.

His eyes catch the blood spray across her arm, then, and that faded diner crawls to the forefront of his mind, bringing along with it her vivid gasps as she heard him work, the way she reached for him as blood dripped down his skin and then the way she’d shrunk back after seeing the mangled bodies at his feet.

She’d turned away, but he just keeps bringing this back to her.

The one word apology is hard to choke out, but she just shushes him, presses another hand to his face, and he could almost lose himself in that touch. The thought terrifies him enough to keep his heavy eyes from rolling into the back of his head.

“How long have you been here?”

“Tried—” He starts, and has to suck in a shuttering breath, try again. “I have a place, near. But yours was closer, and sun was coming up.”

“The one time I pull an all-nighter at The Bulletin,” she says, and he sort of smiles at that, too exhausted to tamp it down.

“ _One_ time?”

“In theory.” Karen’s lips curve for a moment, mirroring him right back, and it’s the last thing he expects. He was doing a shitty job at predicting her feelings, and as he struggles to answer her questions about his injuries, he wonders if she’ll always be like this — if she’ll always be more prepared for him than he is for her.

Lungs starting to seize, he’s acutely aware again of how thick the vest is, how tight it’s sticking against his chest, and he coughs, tries to pull it off, but then she’s wrapping her hands around his to stop him, and he can’t breathe for another reason. She shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t treat him so gently. Shouldn’t treat him like he’s someone she cares about.

It only makes him want to reach right back.

But he shouldn’t.

She offers the bathroom, and it’s the smart idea, so he lets her help move him, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. A goose-bump sweat breaks out across his skin from the exertion. He wants to ask what time it is, if she’s really okay with all of this, if she was keeping the .380 close like he’d told her to.

The bathtub’s cool, and he can’t get enough of it, starts to close his eyes and sink into the quiet abyss calling out for him, almost does— but then she’s pulling at his shirt. He helps as much as he can, not feeling as alleviated as he thought he would once they get the vest off.

Vaguely, he looks at the burgundy stained clothes and the opaque puddle starting to grow underneath him that he can’t actually feel the dampness of anymore, and he thinks he’s probably going through a fair amount of blood loss. If he wasn’t, maybe he’d feel worse about being in his underwear in front of her.

All he feels now is the cool tile and the way her hands are shaking.

He wants to tell her it’s okay, take her hands in his, make her understand how much he has to apologize for. He wants to reach out.

This time, just delirious enough, he _does_.

Karen’s hands are soft within his, and he’s losing energy rapidly, but his relief is heady when the tremors stop rolling through her. The pain on her face dimly reminds him why he came here in the first place. He licks his lips. “Red’s got a— _a nurse friend_.”

She nods, swallowing fast. His hands are starting to slip and he can’t keep them up much longer with sheer willpower, can’t control his quaking muscles. He wants to say a lot of things all of a sudden, but the limits of time sit like an anvil on his chest, and panic hits him, panic about lost chances and intense regrets.

He can’t leave her broken from this. He can’t leave her broken the way he is.

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” he tries, and it’s all he manages before the darkness hits him.

 

* * *

 

Every curtain’s thrown open, every inch of the house bathing in light, and Lisa’s running as fast as a rocket through the rooms, squealing as he chases after her and pretends he doesn’t know where she is. He gets close to her then, on the other side of the kitchen table, and she throws up her hands, making a silly face of a taunt, before she’s skipping off again. 

She’s lackadaisical this time, so he surprises her, reaching her in two long strides to scoop her up and toss her in the air.

She’s laughing and it’s _infectious_ , spills it out of him, too, as he carries her back to the front room. Maria’s got Frank Jr. at the piano, and Frank chides her for being so serious, but she sends a teasing grin his way before taking their son’s hands back in hers and tries teaching him the keys. Frank Jr. growls out in his best Cookie Monster impression, and then Maria’s relenting with a laugh, giving him the go ahead to grab as many as he wants out of the pantry.

Frank turns to the kitchen, but then he’s spinning, can’t get his feet back on the ground as he hears Lisa asking to play Airplane, asking to fly, and Frank Jr.’s calling out that _he wants to play that too_. When the image clears, Frank finds himself in the hospital. He’s holding Lisa newborn in his hands, and he’s struck by how tiny she is, so damn tiny, and suddenly he can’t breathe. She’s too precious, he’s going to mess this up, he’s going to mess all of it up, but then Maria’s telling him _it’s okay_ , and he turns to see her, but the world tilts again.

He tries to keep Lisa cradled against his chest, tries to protect her, but at some point she’s slipped from his hands, and then he’s back standing at their mantle with the house empty of everything except the pictures in front of him, arms hanging at his sides. They’re moving in the frames, like he’s watching the memories on a loop, _can’t stop watching_ , and tears start to roll down his cheeks long before he can recall why.

Something shifts, and the light’s are going out, the pictures snapping still back into freeze frames. He can barely see them, barely make out each of their faces behind the glass with how dark it becomes, and he’s just as haunted by that as he is by the conflict inside of him between the part that wants to look at them forever and the part that would give anything to blink away. 

Petite hands wrap around his waist, and all of him wants to move now, to embrace her, but he can’t, only feeling Maria pressing her cheek against his spine as she whispers, _“It’s okay_.”

“No, it’s not,” he says, and he can’t stop weeping, but she just keeps repeating those two words like a broken record until he can’t remember why she’s saying them. Frank takes hold of her hands and squeezes them tightly, entwines their fingers. She repeats the makeshift mantra until it’s all that fills his head, until it makes him dizzy and he sucks in a shaky breath, has to ask, “What is?”

Her lips are at the shell of his ear, and she must be on her tippy toes to get that close around him. He tries to turn, hold her properly one more time, but he’s stuck paralyzed as she removes herself from his grip. “ _To be alive_ ,” she whispers, the lightest kiss brushing against the back of his neck before she’s gone and he’s left standing alone in a house that no longer exists.

 

* * *

 

No one’s more surprised than him when he finds himself slowly emerging from the darkness, dry eyes struggling to open, fingers twitching against soft sheets. Softer than anything he’s got left.

The clouds in his vision slowly clear until he’s squinting up at the ceiling, rolling his head to the side to take in the room, familiarity ebbing like an uncomfortable low-tide along his spine until it clicks. _Karen_. He was at her place — he came to her.

One of his worse decisions.

But he was still alive, and he wasn’t in handcuffs again. That was something.

He was starting to think death just didn’t like him very much, the demented idea tearing through him as he winces while attempting to sit up, when he feels a different kind of warmth against his ribs. Frank stops moving and turns his head left. 

There’s a crease resting between her brows, tiniest hint of a frown curving her lips downward. She’s worried — about him. Frank breaths out heavily. He’d wish nothing more than for that worry to come from an annoyance at having to babysit him, at having to keep his sorry ass alive, but the way she’s curled up near him throws that possibility out the window.

He stares at her, considering, in the long moments before she joins him in the waking world.

He doesn’t know what to do with her, but that probably makes two of them.

When she stirs, he has half a minute of pretending he’s still asleep, pretending he can’t answer to her prodding gaze right now, but then she’s stretching her legs, and her fingers flutter at his side, teasing in a way he knows she doesn’t mean. Maybe isn’t even aware of. He looks back at her.

“I should go.”

He needs agreement, but she just huffs. “You’re staying until you can walk out of here in one piece.”

“Yeah?” He scoffs quiet. Considering how he’s just had a hard time getting his abs to cooperate, that was going to take a bit of time. Time he shouldn’t spend anywhere near her, burdening her, _endangering_ _her_. 

If only he’d been in his right mind before he’d come here — but the qualifications of sanity for him weren’t exactly firm these days. 

“Okay; you’re the boss,” he relents as he tries to sit up again. This time, there’s a small degree of success. He takes in her apartment, gets to see it with a lingering eye this time, and he thinks to tell her she’s got a knack for cleaning up bloodstains, but when he opens his mouth he asks after his things. 

She’s rambling about bleach, about maybe ruining his weapons, and it makes him smirk, despite everything. “They’ll be just fine, ma’am.”

The smile she sends back his way clears the line from her forehead, makes her glow, and terror seizes every muscle in his body. His trigger finger starts up, itching for use away from this warm room.

Karen’s as bad at letting go as he is, but the worst of it is the way he’s making her _comfortable_ , how he’s lulling her senses of concern. And how she’s doing the same for him. She shouldn’t, but she is, and he doesn’t want her to, yet a greater part of him almost needs her to.

She’s not just under his skin, she’s in his head, she’s burrowed in close past every wall, and no fight he’s faced since he should’ve died has left him this disturbed. 

“Got to say, I’m surprised you’re alright with keeping a _dead guy_ in your apartment,” he grounds out.

She hits him — actually hits him, hand against chest, and it’s a weak attempt, but what it says about her denial only grows his anxiety. “Don’t say that, Frank.”

“It’s the truth.”

Karen’s angry, flushing. He can’t look away from her. “No, it’s not. _It’s not_.”

She’s got a hint of tears in her eyes, and he knows he just might too, wide-eyes mirroring each other as he’s reminded of the way she crossed that hospital red tape without a second thought, how she’d come in close and trusted him without prejudice, sitting across from him in prison and laying her soul out bare right alongside his.

“And, I didn’t mean it — not really,” she confesses low. “I wish I could take it all back.”

That could knock him off balance, if he let it, and it’s pathetic how much he wants to give in. 

But that’s a delusion, and he’ll only end up giving her a death sentence at the end of it.

Frank’s voice is hard. “You _shouldn’t_.”

He only watches as her heart seeps disappointment behind stormy eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be posting part 2 within the next week or so as I'm perpetually editing, and rewriting, and editing some more~~
> 
> Also, the dreams sequences may have come across strange (I know my writing style's weird), but I sincerely and honestly tried my hardest to capture Frank's pain with Maria and the kids as respectfully as possible. That's what has had me the most nervous about actually posting this tbh....So, I hope I did that and them at least a modicum of the justice they deserve~
> 
> Thanks for reading :3


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